Friday, October 21, 2005

Variety named its 100 icons of the century based on factors like their commercial and creative impact. The list consisted of people from all facets of the entertainment industry, but only those in the music arena are listed below (the top ten were ranked):

Saturday, June 4, 2005

Mariah Carey was the singer of the ‘90s with her pop/R&B/AC blend of music, but was quickly derailing in the first half of the next decade. After signing an $80 million contract with Virgin Records, she had an infamous appearance on MTV’s Total Request Live, a huge commercial failure with her semi-autobiographical film and album project Glitter, and reportedly had a physical and emotional breakdown. It didn’t help that she largely “abandoned her girl-next-door tunefulness in favor of hip-hop whoredom.” PD

Virgin dumped her, but Def Jam gambled that the fifteen-time-chart-topper might have something left. With collaborator Jermaine Dupri, Carey found the right mix of contemporary and old-school R&B on “Together.” While “uncharacteristically restrained” AB’00 for Carey, it still had a “rapid-fire, Beyoncé-esque staccato vocal” PD that just might make it “the finest single of her career.” PD

We Belong Together

Not only did it put Carey back on top after a five year absence, but Billboard magazine named it the most successful song in history by a female artist WK and the best-selling song of the decade. SF Its 14 weeks atop the pop chart tied it with the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling” as the biggest #1 of the decade and in the rock era only “One Sweet Day,” which Carey recorded with Boyz II Men, has spent more weeks (16) atop the Hot 100. Two more trips to the top before decade’s end put Carey second only to the Beatles.

The laundry list of writers (ten credits in all) suggest a written-by-committee approach, but some of the credits are due to references to other R&B heartbreak songs. In a radio-flipping session, Carey cleverly weaves lyrics from Bobby Womack’s “If You Think You’re Lonely Now” and The Deele’s “Two Occasions” into her own reflections of love lost.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

1. Six Months in a Leaky Boat *
2. A Life Between Us ***
3. Weather with You **
4. There Goes God **
5. Nothing Wrong with You ***
6. Part of You, Part of Me ***
7. World Where You Live **
8. Bold As Brass *
9. Edible Flowers ***
10. Disembodied Voices ***
11. Give It a Whirl *
12. What’s the Matter with You? *
13. Anything Can Happen ***
14. It’s Only Natural **